◀ ▲ ▶History / 19th-century / Person: Bunyakovsky, Viktor Yakovlevich

Person: Bunyakovsky, Viktor Yakovlevich

Viktor Bunyakovsky worked on Number Theory as well as geometry, mechanics and hydrostatics. He discovered the Cauchy-Schwarz inequality 25 years before Cauchy or Schwarz.

Mathematical Profile (Excerpt):

• Bunyakovskii was first educated at home and then went abroad, obtaining a doctorate from Paris in 1825 after working under Cauchy.
• Bunyakovskii submitted three doctoral theses in the spring of 1825.
• In 1826 Bunyakovskii left Paris and returned to St Petersburg.
• Bunyakovskii studied and taught in St Petersburg for many years.
• Two years after his return to St Petersburg from Paris, Bunyakovskii became an adjunct in mathematics at the Academy, then he was named an extraordinary academician in 1830 (here extraordinary means the same as in the German system, the equivalent of an associate professor in the present American system).
• Bunyakovskii published over 150 works on mathematics and mechanics.
• In the monograph Bunyakovskii gave some results on the functional form of the inequality.
• However, in the case of Bunyakovskii there seems no good reason at all why he should not have the credit for his discovery.
• One would have to note, however, that the terminology of mathematics is not universal and in some countries his theorem is correctly named, or named after Cauchy, Bunyakovskii and Schwarz.
• Bunyakovskii worked on number theory, geometry and applied mathematics.
• Dickson, in his book on the history of number theory, gives 40 references to papers of Bunyakovskii.
• Bunyakovskii also worked on geometry.
• Bunyakovskii's book also attempts to make Laplace's Théorie analytique des probabilites (1812) more accessible.
• Bunyakovskii is remembered in many ways other than for the formula which fails to bear his name.

Born 16 December 1804, Bar, Podolskaya gubernia (now Vinnitsa oblast), Ukraine. Died 12 December 1889, St Petersburg, Russia.

View full biography at MacTutor

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@J-J-O'Connor

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References

Adapted from other CC BY-SA 4.0 Sources:

1. O’Connor, John J; Robertson, Edmund F: MacTutor History of Mathematics Archive